2020-04-10 — 4 1/2 Letter Average

Yeah… you’ve probably accurately guessed the meaning of the title if you’ve been keeping up with what I’ve been writing recently.

Ugh.

Rough day.

I woke up sick… but at the time, not 100% sure it wasn’t just allergies. Then you’ve got this whole Covid-19 thing, and what feels like a normal generally harmless (but quite annoying) cold, now could be something with a little more potency to it. So, now I think twice about it. And thrice. And… (what’s four times? Fwice?!?! 😊)

Anyway… but no fever, and I do have gunk in my lungs, I think, so not Covid-19 symptoms (sorry to disappoint), though it does feel a little different than I’m used to. My chest is a bit tighter.

Being sick isn’t what made the day rough, though. That was just more of an annoyance and a time waster having to wipe down everything I touched and whatnot. What did make it rough was just how the day went. People who wanted us to come not answering their phones. Customers not being ready for us when we got there. Customers not having the money they knew they were going need to pay us for the work we did when we were done. Jobs not going well at all (David accidentally caught a car on fire today 😬, broke a part, and didn’t figure out the issue after 3+ hours. I had a 1.7-hour radiator job take 5 hours or so because parts were missing, parts were bad, the new radiator was manufactured improperly, and on and on.

Ugh. Rough day… and my vocabulary, because of my poor self control lately, took a dive. 4 1/2 letter average, I imagine. My IQ probably decreased, too. Ugh. I’m definitely dumber at the end of the day than I was at the start. 😬

On the bright side, despite everything seemingly going wrong, it turned out to be a decent money day. I can’t complain. It certainly could have been a heck of a lot better than it was, but I still made plenty of money. It just kicked both our butts to do it, and my contract worker didn’t get much today. I’d like for him to have made a lot more than he did today. He worked hard. It just didn’t go so well in places… for either of us.

I did give a bunch of discounts today, though. So that’s something. I knocked 15% off the first job. I did a battery job for no labor charge at all for a repeat customer. I didn’t charge another customer for the gallon of coolant I used during the diagnostic, and I gave 30% off to the last customer and didn’t charge him for the brake cleaner I used. Poor guy. I think his motor might be toast.

I’m really tired, really stressed, and overwhelmed again.

I know. That was fast. Yeah, right back into the fire, and I’m ill equipped nowadays to handle stress very well. That means that it doesn’t matter how many slower days I have that give me a chance to take a deep breath, I’m just… broken, so the stress seeps in through all my cracks and drowns me a lot faster than it used to.

Buuuuuuuuut! 

It’s good for me.

I need the practice dealing with it (not that I don’t have tons and tons and tons of stressful circumstances to use as practice in handling challenges well… I have gagillions… It’s because I’m so slow to learn how to let go of having things my way). The more experiences I have like this, perhaps the closer I’ll get to finally just letting go and saying… “It’s okay. I’d rather just roll with it and let it go than be stressed and frustrated and discouraged because I set my impossibly-high expectations, and they weren’t met.

I just have to let go of the outcome expectations. I have little power over those anyway, so it’s a bit idiotic to keep choosing to be angry and frustrated when my outcome expectations aren’t met. Yup… gotta forget the outcome expectations and just focus on the effort expectations.

Did I give a worthy effort?

Yurp.

That should be enough. If it doesn’t pan out, well… whatever. I’ll evaluate and see if my approach needs to change, but I’ll pat myself on the back knowing that my effort was worthy and my intent was good.

Of course, it’s so easy to talk the talk. You know? I can teach 8 billion people how to live a happy life, even with their 8 billion unique lives, and I’m confident I would have very effective and wise counsel to give each of them personally. And yet… to use the example my nephew recently gave: Knowing how to lift a car doesn’t make it any lighter. You still have to lift it… And I don’t know about you, but though I might be relatively strong, I’m not that strong.

Anyway, it’s 11:09 central time right now. I’m gonna head to bed here shortly. It’ll be good for me, and I need it, so I’ll close with these thoughts on gratitude…

1. I’m grateful that I was able to do the battery job free of charge for the lady today. She was surprised by that, and it’s always nice to be able to do the kinds of things that give people pause, that really mean something to people.
2. I’m grateful for what writing a daily journal is doing for me simply in terms of my focus and activities. I haven’t watched anything on Amazon Prime for a couple days or so. Certainly my routine is begging to be followed, but I have journal entries to write. 😊
3. After a day like today, I’d probably have spent a few hours watching something on Amazon Prime, and I’d probably have relapsed in porn/masturbation. But… I have a journal entry to write, and now that I’ve been focusing on that, I’m just tired, and thirsty, and ready for bed. Replace bad habits with good ones, right? I’m grateful my journal writing is helping me to be better, replacing my bad habits with a more effective/beneficial use of my time. I havn’t been perfect by any means since starting my journal. I think I’ve relapsed twice since I started writing daily journal entries… but not today. A day when I almost certainly would have. I think my last relapse was the 7th. So… pretty crappy overall, but clean today because of my journal. I’ll take it. That’s a positive end to a really rough day. And now here y’all are getting the play by play, so let’s hope the extra accountability helps me kick this crap or good, eh? Let’s hope. Nearly 35 years of the junk.
4. I’m grateful that I haven’t bought candy since the day I decided to stop. Today would be another day that I would’ve probably gone to buy more comfort food (I really could go for a hot tamale or 200 right now 😊). But I didn’t. I don’t even know if I thought about it. Nope. I don’t think buying candy even crossed my mind.
5. I’m grateful to again be home earlier than way late at night. I got home before 9:30 tonight, I think. That’s good. I’m gonna work on being even better than that. Could you imagine me home before 6?!?!?!?  Now let’s not get crazy, folks. 😉

Well, all y’all. I be excausted. I need some sleep. That’s one more thing I need to work on among the 50 billion things I need to work on–getting to bed at a better hour. I can’t even imagine what life would be like if I got to bed by 10. I used to go to bed at like 9:30 to 10:00 every night! Those were actually some of the best days of my life. Granted, I wasn’t dating then because I thought I understood that part of my life, and so not being out late was easy. Times are obviously different, so it might be hard to do that now if I actually ever get a dating life going again, but it was nice then. It might be nice again now. I’m not a morning person at all, but I do love to be up in the morning at an hour when most of the rest of the peeps in the world (those in my time zone anyway) are fast asleep. There’s just something about it.

Exercise, too. That’s another one of the 50 billion things.

(sigh)

One thing at a time, one day at a time.

Oh, and to you, sister h, yes, I’m gonna give myself an artificial fever tonight. I’m gonna take this cold and kick it to the curb. Boom.

Good night, Saigon. Good night.

~ s